'Nerd,' 'Nonsmoker,' 'Wrongdoer': How Might A.I. Label You?

Facial recognition and other A.I. technologies learn their skills by analyzing vast amounts of digital data. Drawn from old websites and academic projects, this data often contains subtle biases and other flaws that have gone unnoticed for years. ImageNet Roulette, designed by the American artist Trevor Paglen and a Microsoft researcher named Kate Crawford, aims to show the depth of this problem. "We want to show how layers of bias and racism and misogyny move from one system to the next," Mr. Paglen said in a phone interview from Paris. "The point is to let people see the work that is being done behind the scenes, to see how we are being processed and categorized all the time."